So a lot of times when people have blood deficiencies, blood issues, I don't mean, it could go back to the issue of having leaky gut. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode,
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Speaking of communication, when it comes to the gut and your mind, there is this mind-gut connection that we will be focusing on today with my guest Lauren LC Wells. She is the CEO of Provival. She is a holistic wellness and self-care expert, and she's here to talk to us about how the
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is affecting how we feel and all the mental issues that come with that and how this affects business overall. Now before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Lauren. Hi, Roberta. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being on the show. Welcome. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Again, I'm Lauren Wells. I am from New York.
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And I am definitely a family woman, no children yet, but definitely a proud godmother and auntie. And I definitely claim my husband as my first child, my first baby. So I am a newlywed. I haven't only been about six, seven months. Congratulations. Being married, so I am a newlywed. Yes, I'm definitely very loving, open person, a true healer at nature innately before I even got into this work.
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Yeah, I definitely am a big family oriented person and love to spend time with family, traveling, having fun with friends and families. That's definitely things that I love to do outside of my work. So as I was saying that a lot of the time people think, oh, if you don't have kids, then you're not a full family. You and your husband are full family, by the way. Yeah. Right, so how did you get started or have an interest in anything related to health?
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Yeah, so I've been in the health wellness fitness industry as long as I can remember since even high school. I went to a vocational high school studying nursing. When I started making a career choice after college, I studied rehabilitation. So I had the choice to either to be a therapist. I definitely have some training in the mental health aspect. But I at one point when I was coming out of college, I thought I wanted to go more for occupational therapy, but still working with patients who had disabilities, physical as well as mental.
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But I actually started to migrate more, my way of getting into more of the Western philosophy, you know, where you kind of go from like the Eastern and Eastern and started going more into holistic healing. I would say I started getting into it more in fitness. In 2008, I was going into the military after college. I actually graduated college in 2008, right when the market crashed. So jobs were just like scarce.
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A was horrible. Again, I said I live in New York City, so it still wasn't cheap, right? I couldn't maintain my student loans. Living on my mom's couch, I was like, this isn't working. So I decided to go to enlist in the US Navy and it sparked an interest getting to fitness. I started to go to the gym, started seeing a change in my body. Some of my friends were all like, oh, that's my trainer going to work out and stuff with me. I burnt my leg a couple of days before shipping out and I ended up getting kicked out because I couldn't go.
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everything that we go through paces its purpose, right? I never would have worked out. I would have never gotten to fitness if it wasn't for that journey. So over some time, of course I went back into the human and health social service field working with adults who have mental disabilities, but only like a year out, I was like, this is still not serving me. It's not making enough money, but I still stuck to fitness. And it took some years, but I realized the path that I wanted to partake on and that calling that was coming upon me and seeing...
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how much the fitness was making a difference in my life, I decided to go ahead and become a fitness trainer. And then it just started to open up another door after another door, realizing that, okay, it's more than just working out, because I would work out and feel like that was an excuse to eat anything I want. And then I started to experience my gut health issues. I later ended up having what the layman term of leaky gut and started to notice a pattern of like depression and...
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But I realized how much when I started to pay attention to gut health, started getting into nutrition and understanding from more of a holistic aspect and just diets, calories and calories out and started getting into a lot more mind body healing modality, I started to really learn the connection between the two. Started to see the patterns of my mental health state, the patterns as I started to take care of my gut health, how much it started to
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my thoughts, my concentration, so many of those aspects. And then it just started to be years of just continuing to dive down that path. You know, it's interesting. I hear you say that it's becoming more mainstream now, sharing this knowledge of the mind-guard connection. I remember back in the day, remember when you first went to your, the first buffet you went to, and you eat all this food, and afterwards, how do you feel?
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They say you get the itis, right? You feel all tired and sleepy. You're sluggish. Because again, that connection of I filled up my gut way more than I should have. And my body, how it's feeling, my mind, everything just becomes that way. So it's almost like we've always known this, but we didn't probably pay attention to that connection. Yeah.
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And that's why I am super big on mindfulness, right? Because we just kind of roll with things how it is and think that's the way of life. And, you know, in certain people's families and cultures, Itis is like a laughing joke. Oh, she got the Itis. I know. Knocked her out. And it's like, it's not supposed to. If we even start understanding what Itis is, Itis is inflammation. When we start kind of having that understanding and knowing that food is supposed to give you energy, we're supposed to eat for energy.
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And we're not supposed to eat to feel like knocked out, tired, lethargic, moody, get away from me. Oh, you know, and as we allow the taste buds to overcompensate our awareness of what the food is doing to our body. That's why, you know, having some understanding, some education, and that's what I always do a lot of like workshops, you know, sharing this and given the awareness of this and paying attention on how it feels in the body and then the after effects.
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Because sometimes like, yeah, you might eat the particular food. Maybe you don't get itis, but you get gas and bloating. And then later you get a headache with certain foods or you get achy joints. This is why it's super important. And that your hormones live in your gut, right? And they communicate to your brain. So your brain can communicate to the organs to share the different things it needs to share. Oh, I'm hungry. Oh, shut the other things down that's going on in the body, because we got to do a lot of labor and work into
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gut, you know, what was eaten so we can try to dismiss and distribute the toxins, like all of that, right? So all that feeling tired and sluggish is your body is going to work exhaustion work almost, and it has to like slow you down, put you to sleep. And one of the things where I talk about how the gut and the mind is connected is through one of the longest nerves in your body, which is known as the vagus nerve connects from the brain to
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various organs throughout your body and your gut is one of them. And it plays a super, super important crucial role with regulating the body's main functions. And that's your heart rate, your digestion and your immune response. So when we start understanding that food is almost like data that you put in a computer to make it work, you start thinking a little different of what is the right type of data I need to put in this computer to get me to work effectively.
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you know, give me more energy to get me start thinking better. And I'm not moody or groggy or having aches and pains. So those are the things I always share, like with my clients and my workshops and my community master classes, things is getting them to think to that capacity. It literally starts to change a whole concept of what health and wellness is. And it's not this vanity thing of just, oh, I'm gonna eat healthy so I could, you know, starve myself so I can just have a smaller waistline. If we learn how to actually function,
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from mind, body and spirit aspect in all its capacity, we can be able to start knowing and understanding and listening to our body in a better way. And it can shift and change the concepts of importance of what your health really means. Cause health is wealth period. Health certainly is wealth. A few weeks ago, I had these heart palpitations at night, all of a sudden.
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If I eat something that doesn't agree with me, the palpitations will last for about a minute or two and they're gone. But throughout the night, and I was like, no, I gotta do something. I think I'm having a heart attack. I think I'm having heart issues. And when we went to our nearest clinic, it did an EKG, my heart rate is fine. The numbers are fine. The blood pressure numbers are fine. And then it got to me being introduced to this whole idea of the vagus nerve, the foods that are potentially
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that could be triggering those palpitations. It's the nerve. I remember one night I woke up and the palpitations were right on my throat. I'm like, this thing doesn't make any sense. That's how I was introduced to the vagus nerve. Do you find that a lot of people are aware of what it is in their body, how it works? In most cases, no. And I was definitely one of those people, even with my background starting out from nursing. It's a very small percentage when it comes to nutrition, but also don't.
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share in the aspect of how the body responds to nutrition. I had to go through years of understanding. I'm still continuing to learn and understanding. So I would say no, because if I've been sitting here learning this for years and I just recently might have started learning about the biggest nerves maybe about 12 years ago, since it's still gathering a more understanding of that connection, especially when you talk about like the heart palpitating. I had that experience before. I thought I was having a heart attack at one point. And that, and then you still letting your throat, it's a nerve twitching, you know.
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It's not mass education. And the body is just so complex. It's a lot to kind of gather and learn. So just as a base education, no. And sadly, a lot of us start to dive into these things when we start having the problem. Yeah, because as I said, before this, I had not even been exposed to the, it's usually leaky gut. You have a leaky gut, check your food, check how you eat, check how you respond to eat.
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but the vagus nerve is the very first time that I was introduced to the idea and what I'm feeling and understanding my body even further. What is this thing of a leaky gut? So leaky gut, it's like a layman's term. The actual term of leaky gut is increased intestinal permeability. Like when you hear leaky gut, you have a more understanding of like, okay, there must be a leak in my gut, right?
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Leaky gut is a sense of where there may have been some perforating in the intestinal lining, and then toxins can be able to go through and get into your blood. So a lot of times when people have like blood deficiencies, blood issues, I don't mean things of that nature, it could go back to the issue of having leaky gut. And that was my instance. I was having a lot of digestive issues even to the point where if I just drunk water, I was having a lot of stomach abdominal pain. And then I was having
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very raw body acne as an adult out of nowhere. And I'm like, okay, I didn't even have these things as a teenager. Took a lot of gathering, understanding, talking to doctors, you know, cause it's not a full understanding. I just think, oh, here's some topical thing and no one's looking at the root. That was the shift for me to start really diving in and getting an understanding. And some doctors at that time, 14, 16 years ago at this point.
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didn't know or understand, you know, they just adhere to the symptoms and no one's looking for like the root cause. But with leaky gut, it really roots back to there's a distress dysbiosis going on in the gut that has more than likely weakened the intestinal walls and it expands and open. I always teach the intestinal walls is kind of like your hands being together and I always say it's like this gate.
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If we eat certain foods, medication, anything that causes inflammation in the digestive system, when you think about inflammation, it bulge, right? And as it bulges, it starts to open and spread. There's a thing called the villi around intestinal walls and like your fingers almost like this finger like in the spongy looking things around. And when those get weak, they're the ones that's supposed to give like a web like in between. And when it weakens and it starts.
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drop in the sense of the strength of it, then that's how toxins from the foods can start to permeate through, start to get into the blood. So that's the essence and you know, of what the true term of increased intestinal permeability, aka leaky gut really is. Speaking of toxins, when we say this week I'm detoxifying, so does that mean you are taking them away so that you ex-
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breathe them from your body when you say I'm detoxing, I'm detoxing. Yeah, it totally depends on what could be as far as eliminating certain foods, depending on what people are doing with detoxing. Ideally a true detox that can help in the matter is especially in the matter of the heat gut is detoxing in a sense where it can pull toxins from the blood, like cleanse the blood. Yeah. Detoxing can go into so many vats, but in the form of true detoxing, it's eliminating.
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the certain foods that can cause inflammation, foods that like sugars and fried foods, things of that nature, like detox needs to be in a sense of a magnet. So it needs to incorporate some type of herbs, whole food supplements in some form that will detox to pull, and then also return back and nourish at the same time too, because it could probably pull and deplete certain nutrients that you need, you need to always bring it back in.
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healthy. Does that mean all of us should go vegan or is everybody's body different, digestive system different? Everybody's body is different. You really have to understand and know how your body responds. Also, your body is different in different seasons, depending on, you know, certain foods that I can now eat today, now that I have a healthy gut state. I couldn't eat when I was having all the leaky gut issues, even though they were healthy foods. So vegan isn't to say because there's
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vegan foods that's not healthy. So at the end of the day, eating healthy needs to be full foods period that's given full nutritional value that your body can be able to metabolize and digest. And it's a matter in the stage of where you are when it comes to your gut health state, as well as in the time and the seasons of what your body can metabolize, believe it or not, your environment, the body responds different.
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When you go outside in the cold, you shrivel up your coat. And then you have some people whose bodies are adaptable to that. So you have different people who can be able to metabolize different types of food. So this is where mindfulness and awareness is a big gathering and understanding. I recently started gathering and understanding Ayurvedic nutrition. Before that, I was living more plant-based and everything, but with Ayurveda,
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You know, one is understanding what they call dosha type. So they do a gathering and understanding of what the body type is and the true nature of the person's body. And then also too, it goes into the seasons of time and how their body responds in those matters. It'd be very complex, but some aspects of those things, and I've even seen with clients that I've worked with,
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where that protocol, even for myself, may have not worked. So this is why it's always important to gather and understand because your body also becomes adaptable by what you've been eating, whether it was correct or incorrect. So you have to kind of gather what you eat. Now, what I would say about vegan is when it comes to whole plant-based foods that came from nature from the ground, those are good foods to implement.
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but there's certain people, certain body types where they may need animal products. And that was something that brought a big awareness to me when I started understanding Ayurveda and I went through a cleansing detox protocol called Panchakarma and they used animal products to heal and food combinations. It really depends on how we pair food and realize that vegan isn't the answer for everything and everybody. And in most cases, more of really paying attention
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sugar, food combinations, and in some aspects, the responding of how people really digest dairy, because that causes a lot of mucus. So I think it's a matter of really paying attention to the source where you get food, and then how you're pairing those foods together and how your body metabolizes. That's why I said it really depends on your gut health state, how your body responds. Every person's body is unique and different. The work you do with your clients.
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and their mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, burnout, stress. What have been, one, the common threats that you found were the problem, and how, in summary, were they able to overcome those? Yes, so one disclaimer, I'm not a therapist. So I work with therapists. I'm not a doctor. I work with doctors. So when depression comes into state, there's things that I can assist with, help navigate through.
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but definitely always advise for my clients to work with the therapist to help in that capacity. Now, one of the things that I realized that is a big benefit, and I definitely seen this in the cycles of the groups of women that I work with at a mental health clinic that I work with, is when they started to pair some of the basic things, making some improvements, eliminating some of the toxic inflammatory foods out of their diet, they definitely saw some clarity
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aspect as far as less moodiness, less feelings of depression. Like I said, just how the gut and the brain is connected as a two way street. I feel like nutrition, gut health and mental health is a two way street too, because it's supporting the two organs as far as your brain, your overall gastrointestinal system, your digestive system as a whole. So I just feel like they have to work hand in hand to see some improvement. So just as well as to work on the mental, the emotional state.
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what stressors are triggers as far as like work, family, things that we also have to look at what are the stress triggers with foods because foods can be a stress trigger as well. Will you also talk about lower productivity due to mental health issues with employees? There was a Harvard study that said about 20% of US employees say their mental health is either fair or poor on a scale of being great.
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And then they average about $47.6 billion lost annually due to absence and just low productivity overall. Would you like to share your thoughts on that? Yes, I'm very familiar with that statistic and I share and I talk about it all the time. And I feel like I play a very big part in decreasing that 47.6 billion that's lost that caused an economy due to unexpected leave of absence due to a lot of times in mental health state burnout.
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What we do is we really want to support women, minority women specifically, because they have a very high percentage of dealing with stress. Oh mom, especially in leadership roles, they're trying to work twice as hard to serve themselves, you know, to be heard and seen and respected in the workspace where there's not many faces that look like them. So they want to prove themselves. And that kind of.
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or sometimes does create a lot of overwhelm and anxiety and burnout at times. They don't have a safe space to be seen and heard where they can decompress. Get themselves back up and then go back in, right? They're in that constant, I like to call, superwoman syndrome. And one of the things that we do at Herbival is definitely making sure that we support women in and out of the workspace. So in the workspace, by partnering with these companies and bringing in this type of self-awareness, awareness creates changes.
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even having an understanding and understanding why, why you tick, why these things are happening and you got a little root to it that you can start making some shifts and changes. And I'm a big believer in 80-20 rules. So even kind of going back what you said of like, sometimes you know, you have, everybody wants a little glass of wine. You wanna go and have some fun. It's all about 80-20. Have some fun, especially if it gives you the sense of like, relief, some joy or enjoyment. A lot of times food is wrapped around entertainment.
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But then 80% of the time being, you know, making sure that you have a strong digestive system and, you know, mental health aspect as well. So how does it actually produce productivity when you are helping individuals when it comes to their mental state, their aspects of mindfulness, like how I do it is definitely in mindfulness and speaking on mind, body one, educating and understanding this, but actually implementing very easily accessible, digestible pun intended.
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exercises that can be able to implement very easily and shortly. And that's why I like to use the vagus nerve. I like to implement mindfulness practices that you could do to calm your nervous system. And just think about it, when you're in a calmer state, you can think more clearly. When you're in a distressed, high alert state, remember I said the gut and the brain is like a two-way street. There's a traffic jam that starts to happen.
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because like the vagus nerve is overstimulated. So other organs are overstimulated. And when your body's in fight or flight, so fight or flight is sympathetic. You know, you have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous. And when it's overstimulated, other organs are heightened. Your heart rate is raised and then also distress in your digestive system. So like if you were to eat and you're upset, you're gonna hear all that gurgling, stomach can't digest. All the other organs are working. It takes so much to digest.
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and your body needs to be in the most common state, as we call rest and digest, to be able to do that. So it can absorb the nutrients. It can distribute the nutrients that you're getting from your food to your body, where you can have the energy, you can have the mental clarity. So if we don't start bringing some awareness around this, we don't start implementing exercises and things to do, not just physical fitness, but more calming exercises, meditation, deep breathing exercises.
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I always say we give a lot of tools to put in your toolbox. So when life comes at you in different ways, you know which tool to go and get. That's what we do in revival. And that's how we be able to build productivity in and out of the workspace by giving and sharing the awareness, the understanding and giving access to tools. When you have that and you have the right tools to be able to deal with the state that you're in, you can go back and be more productive. If you're a stress-01 burned out, you can't even think clear.
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And there's been studies to show cells drops when in high distress states and increase in a more better workplace environments, clearer thinking, because you can function. So in order to get the body to function properly and respond and get the body more in rest and digest and out of fight or flight, you're overall productive, that increases profits. That makes perfect sense. We always see companies with as low productivity.
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The employees are more engaged, they come up with ideas, they're innovative. So if you're not functioning at your optimum, obviously those ideas aren't gonna be flowing as much. Lauren, last piece of wisdom or advice for us to be mindful of this mind-gut connection and what to do about it after listening to today's episode.
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I know a lot of this information sometimes can be overstimulating because it's like, oh my God, I got so much to do, so much I didn't learn. My first thing that I say, and this is why I always work in the front end, and this is why I've navigated a lot more into the mental health aspect than so much like meal plans, nutrition, and you know, I used to, I still do, but I did a lot of like detox coaching and stuff. I started moving into the front part because when someone's super stressed, it's very hard to...
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that also everything we've got to do to take care of ourselves goes down a long laundry list of everything where else we want to come from. But my best advice with everything and what we focus on the most is really starting to practice with deeper breaths. That's what I'm very passionate about is, you know, really adhering to the aspect of understanding, bringing awareness, and we're just passionate on helping women to smile and breathe deeper. Breathe deeper, words of wisdom from Lauren LCWells, the CEO of
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HerVival, holistic wellness and self-care expert. Lauren, thank you so much for saving our lives by bringing this knowledge to us. We appreciate you for being on the show today. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me, Roberta. It's been a pleasure. My pleasure. And before you go, please tell us where we can find you on the internet if you want to know more about what you shared today. Yes, my website is hervival.co.
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You can learn more about our services, what we do and offer. We really focus on having corporate wellness workshops. We do have virtual mindfulness events. We have one coming up. Also, too, we have our own community, which is accessible via our mobile app. So you can learn more about that on herbivou.co. And I've been hanging out a lot on LinkedIn. So you can find me at Lauren LC Wells on LinkedIn. That's where I like to hang out and spend a lot of my time and share this awareness.
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And that's where you and I hang out a lot too. Yeah. Thank you so much, Lauren LC Wells. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating, and a review on iTunes and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.